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MTN Casts Eye Over Empire as Carrier Mulls Where to Chop

(Bloomberg) -- Africa’s biggest mobile-phone company is doing a spring clean of its empire.

MTN Group Ltd. said Thursday it’s conducting a review to decide whether it really needs to be in all 22 of its markets across Africa and the Middle East. Some of them are tiny, others are in civil wars or fighting insurgencies while some have regulators desperate to curb the Johannesburg-based company’s perceived dominance.

Here are a few countries where MTN is facing challenges, and some new ones that it could move into:

Benin

MTN is in a dispute with regulatory authorities in Benin on frequency fees, which it says are too high. “While we are fighting hard to stay in that market, economic sense needs to prevail,” Chief Financial Officer Ralph Mupita said in an interview Thursday.

Cameroon

MTN received a $6.6 million fine from Cameroon’s telecommunications regulator and a one-year reduction in its license term for allegedly not complying with spectrum and subscriber registration regulations. The company was also ordered to disconnect 3 million subscribers.

“It’s a big priority to resolve this in the near term,” Mupita said. “If it’s not resolvable, then it’s not resolvable. We want to find an amicable resolution to stay.”

Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan

MTN won’t invest in countries it classes as “conflict markets,” which means the local units have to be self funding to stay in business. The company will take “appropriate action” if any of them are not cash-flow positive.

“If the markets are able to return to a non-conflict situation they could be attractive to us,” Mupita said. “Syria, for instance, was one of our top ten markets not so long ago.”

Nigeria

While MTN is highly unlikely to leave its biggest market, the company has had run-ins with the regulator and was forced to pay a $1 billion fine last year for missing a deadline to disconnect unregistered users.

The company expects double-digit Nigeria sales growth in the medium term, above an overall average of high-single digits, as economic conditions improve and it gains subscribers from troubled competitors. As part of the fine settlement, the company agreed to list its local unit on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Talks are also ongoing with the regulator to use spectrum gained from its acquisition of Visafone in 2016.

“Our strategy is to grow our network and we need all the spectrum we can,” said Mupita.

Iran

Iran is one of MTN’s top three markets but the company is struggling to repatriate cash that’s been stuck in the country for years due to former U.S.-led and U.K. sanctions. The carrier has managed to repatriate about 6.5 billion rand ($546 million) to date and is in talks with the central bank to move another 5 billion rand later this year.

“They are prioritizing foreign-exchange allocation to primary industries such as food goods at the moment,” said Mupita.

Ghana

MTN has agreed to sell shares in its local unit to Ghanaian investors in exchange for a 4G license.

“The primary objective is not to monetize, but to comply with regulatory requirements for the 4G license,” said Mupita.

New Markets

Angola plans to sell a minority stake in a state-owned telecommunications provider and hold an auction for a fourth industry operator in 2018.

“We will certainly look at Angola and also Ethiopia if it opened up for a license. There are a couple of countries in West Africa that we could look at, like Togo and Senegal,” the CFO said.

MTN’s stock fell 0.7 percent to 133.94 rand as of 9:40 a.m. in Johannesburg on Friday, paring gains over the past 12 months to 11 percent, and valuing the company at 252 billion rand.